'Oh, I'm not that sort of doctor'
Medical Bollocks
with Dr Yobbo
Hello there. Dr Yobbo here. It is indeed true that The Drugs don't work. In fact they've had fuck all work since the utterly deserved termination of their fifteen minutes of fame (although to be accurate their Triple J one hit wonder 'The Bold And The Beautiful' was actually three minutes ten). It would appear The Drugs have barely been heard from since 28 Days ripped up one of their gigs at the Duke of Windsor in Melbored after the band called out the 'Days lead singer Jedi Jay online ref. being a misogynistic homophobic fucktard. Come to think of it, 28 Days haven't had a lot of work since then either. However The Drugs' namesake, drugs, in particular the legal flavours of same such as sleeping pills and antidepressants, have been in plentiful work recently as well as getting large amounts of press coverage. Unfortunately for Roche, Sanofi-Aventis and the other happy-go-lucky confederates of Big Pharma, it's all been less than helpful coverage; Prozac and friends don't work worth a fuck and Stilnox works a bit too bloody well thanks very much. Having said more than enough in previous media commitments ref. the pruning of Leaf Hedger, in this commentary we focus our analysis upon the former reportage.
The recent findings from Prof Irving Kirsch's group at the University of Hull - good loyal league territory up the frigid end of Engerland - that for people suffering from mild to moderate depression, a lot of prescription antidepressants actually enact bugger all effect beyond that of a placebo, isn't actually that novel. The same research team was saying the same thing five and a half years ago where, like in the most recent study, freedom-of-information requests were used to coerce Big Bad Pharma researchers into reporting their 'no result' findings which they'd previously been instructed to sit on by their bosses. So does failing to admit that their products work about as well as sucking on a barley sugar and playing Frenzal Rhomb's Cheer Up at thermonuclear volume, make Large Pharma a bunch of mercenary cocks? Well yeah, but they're not responsible to anyone other than their shareholders and in today's capitalist clusterfuck of a society can hardly be expected to be. The fickle finger of blame could be levied equally at the drug companies' own tame researchers for not manning up and getting the word out despite the directives of their overlords, or the respective governmental authorities for not doing their own homework on whether this shit actually does what it says on the tin.
What this really points to is a simple, clear, unambiguous message: the world's neurochemists are fuckin' shit at their job. Despite years of research and millions in public and private coin flung frenziedly at the problem like a monkey hurling shit, we still know two fifths of fuck all about how the brain works. While Big Arse Pharma knows enough about the brain biochemistry of severe depression to be able to shambles together some vaguely serviceable serotonin reuptake inhibitors to service the clinically depressed end of the market, it's not even been properly clinically established that mild and moderate forms of depression are caused by the same biochemical pathways as severe cases, and as such throwing the same drugs at the problem is unsurprisingly going to work vaguely well in some individuals' cases and yet extrude great steaming barrowloads of nowt in others. But does that stop, for instance, NZ medicos cranking out some 700,000 antidepressant prescriptions a year, or Strayan quacks cranking through over twelve million Proton Pill scripts across 2005/06? Does it bollocks.
Now as a trained medical professional* I'm not here to slag off antidepressants per se; this isn't some new-age, herbal-remedy, Breatharian-bullshit response to overmedicating the endemic sads of Western civilization. The drugs do work, usually, for the conditions they were designed for, i.e. severe clinical depression. But there's no doubt that antidepressants are massively overprescribed in this and most first-world countries, and that this is primarily because it's a lot cheaper for any health service with a constricted cashflow to throw a hastily scrawled prescription at a mildly depressed individual than having to train and maintain a fleet of expensive human-type counsellors to deal with their issues in non-chemical ways, should that be available as an option. In an atmosphere where all governments regardless of political persuasion spend arse-all on health, the reality remains that human capital is expensive to establish, retain and replace, whereas ten minutes of a GP's time and a shiny white bottle of Aropax from the overly made up chick in the flight attendant outfit at the dispensary (why the hell do pharmacy staff dress like that anyway?) is comparatively bargainlicious.
Of course this whole antidepressants-equals-placebos deal would all be a victimless crime, large sums of health taxes wasted on drugs notwithstanding, if it wasn't for the fact that antidepressants (unlike those oh-so-tasty placebos) have the odd side effect. Like buggering your sleep, ruining your appetite (should have just had a Milky Way instead) and annihilating your sex life, if anyone was still shagging you after having cracked the sads on such an epic scale to the point of needing medication anyway. The World of Bollocks has in its time had quite a few friends and family put onto the Proton Pills** - in fact, unfortunate and ironic as it seems, two more the same week of the most recent Kirsch study. Common links between all the World's medicated depressives seem to be a family history of mental illness, clinically defined as at least one parent several sandwiches short of a picnic - actually more like a Subway store short in some cases - which clearly points to an inheritable component (like we couldn't have guessed genetics would be involved.) But whether the same genes are involved in mild depression as are affected in severe depression is not something The Biggest Pharma are willing or interested in pursuing, probably because demonstrating proven clinical efficacy against mild depression - likely to be a massively multifactorial trait with many complex overlappings of genetics and environment - is not a moneyspinner compared with the easier pickings of targeting the severely compromised, whose biochemistry is more recognisably and reproducibly fucked up to the point where drugs can be designed against particular malcontent molecular targets.
So because The World of Bollocks never identifies problems without promoting solutions*** we offer the following cast-iron exit strategies for Dimensionally Enhanced Pharma to dig themselves out of the equally dimensionally enhanced PR hole which Prof Kirsch et al have dug for them. Drug dealers of the world, your options are as follows:
Option 1: Start spending some fucking money on basic research, you cheap-arsed bastards.
Instead of maintaining your current MO of either massively slashing your R&D budgets or just focusing on massively applied, reiterative work to pick off the obvious targets (usually involving refining the existing drugs they already have under patent for other, not necessarily suitable, applications) why don't you throw some of the shareholders' largesse at actual proper researchers - not your trained monkeys in the back shed - to find some shit out about the molecular aetiology of mild and moderate forms of depression, in order to come up with more efficacious and less mind-bending treatments for these sorts of conditions - instead of just churning out industrial strength SSRIs capable of killing a yak (and then 'encouraging' the nation's fleet of tired, bored, unfulfilled GPs into prescribing them, or whatever else is on the letterhead of their promotional notepaper, for whatever conditions are brought by the prevailing winds. Basic research, people. Knowledge is power, and power is money. Believe me I know, the fucking power company just put the cost of ours up, they must be rolling in the stuff.
2. Use your powers for good.
By this I mean that Pharm Bigga should harness their renown abilities in massively rorting government regulatory systems and public feeling (to wit, Roche's campaign to get their hideously expensive and dubiously effective breast cancer drug Herceptin funded by governments here and O/S by funding and organising various patient support groups with a line in drumming up stories in the womens' mags heavy on emotion and light on fact) to get a new-generation SSRI through stage III clinical trials which is, in fact, made from icing sugar, cornflour and that artificially coloured citrusy shit they used to put in Wizz Fizz sherbet packets. Placebos work as well as antidepressants but without the side effects, huh? Then go on and market the fuckers. As long as people believe the placebos are actually in some way biochemically functional and active, you'll be laughing all the way to the shareholders AGM. You'll just need to lay down enough folding to 'convince' the FDA, the relevant health boards and the international research community to buy into the little charade.
All for the greater public good, of course...
___________________
* In the sense that I am neither medically trained nor in any way professional
** As distinct from the Proton Pils which was a home brew Craigos and I put together in late 2002, broadly in the Czech Pilsener style but with added piquant and refreshing citrus elements courtesy the use of Cascade aromatic hops added late in the final fermentation
*** Surely you don't need to check down here in the footnotes to confirm that's a complete load of wank
___________________
Next time: The Weak in Sport takes Australian opening thug Matthew Hayden to task over his unprecedented, unprovoked and unconscionable Triple M Brisbane morning radio tirade against Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh. Calling Harbhajan an 'obnoxious little weed' is, for an Australian sporting role model like Hayden, utterly unacceptable. Calling him a noxious little weed is far more appropriate, as well as being more grammatically precise. Please be more careful in future.
___________________
Peace and clarity to all, particularly those fallen on black days. You know who you are and you know you are loved. Look after yourselves.
The Doctor is OUT.
